"One option is to keep the gateway's east-west route on the "back belt," through Old Metairie, while elevating the tracks to eliminate chokepoints at road crossings. The other is to reroute rail traffic to the "middle belt" along Earhart Expressway through Hollygrove and onto the lightly used tracks along Airline."

Shifting the majority of the area's east-west freight traffic to Hollygrove, though a long-way off, is becoming increasingly likely, Myers reports, "as state transportation planners, industry forces and local politicians focus more intently than ever on easing the stifling chokepoint that is the regional rail system."

Aw, shucks. The wealthy people of Old Metairie don't like the inconvenience of trains, so John Young and company want to move them to New Orleans. Well, you can find another way to deal because we don't want them either.

I hope, probably in vain, considering the potential of widespread bribery, that New Orleans declines the offer.

Lets get to the real help moving the train would do. The dip in the road at Airline would allow the bridge to be removed and the street raised so it wouldn't flood and people could use it as an evacuation route. Also the bridge crossing I 10 would come down and that road could be built up so that also wouldn't flood and could by the evacuation route it says it is. Never can be improved unless the roads can be raised which means the bridges have to come down.

Back Belt doesn't have any way to expand the way the railroads want to expand it. The proposed Middle Belt (Hollygrove Corridor) could move the trains the way the railroads want to move traffic and would allow the citizens of New Orleans to safely evacuate in a hurricane when the road flooding issues are corrected.

If you're going to claim that Hollygrove doesn't want them for the same reasons that Old Metairie doesn't want them, then why do you get to shift OM's problems on someone else? Especially when that track and those trains were there long before the people were there?

If the community that wants the trains out of their community can pay for the entire of the relocation, go ahead, but why expect taxpayers who knew better than to live so close to so active tracks and in a neighborhood that has no other way out to pay for it?

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The National Environmental Policy Act mandates a rigorous environmental study that thoroughly evaluates both options before arriving at a conclusion. That study is expected to conclude at the end of 2014, and a public comment period will follow.

Read Ben Myer's original story titled "Old Metairie trains would move to Hollygrove under rerouting considered by planners" by clicking here.